carbonel

This isn't that kind of emergency house-cleaning. At least, not unless I die suddenly. I'd trust people to handle my stuff, but I'm not sure I could trust them to properly triage the keep-vs.-toss decisions.

I think the houses you've been involved with have had a lot more sheer junk. I have some of that, but what I get embroiled in are tasks that need tasks: "I want to get rid of this spare computer. But I need to scrub it before I do that. And to do that, I need to connect it to a keyboard and monitor. And that takes a lot more time than just taking it to a recycle place." That's just an example, so please don't try to fix that specific instance. Just multiply that by many.

Sometimes the Gordian solution is the correct one. For example, in my office I have a box of Win95-era software and data, and I should probably just toss the whole thing, even though it's vaguely conceivable that there's data I'll miss if it's gone. But lots of other things require either decisions or additional work.

And (as another example) in my office I have a box of miscellaneous office supplies. It's a cardboard banker's box. It has been sitting in my office for about 10 years, because I haven't found a better solution to the problem of where office supplies should go. This comes under the aegis of "there is nothing so permanent as a temporary emergency," I suppose. It's not an ideal solution, and it's vaguely annoying, but it does work.